On February 28, 2005, almost exactly two blocks from my apartment, two people, a man and a woman, were killed in the basement of a fine, century-old wood-frame house on the North Side of Chicago. Both had sustained .22-caliber bullet wounds to the head. The victims were the husband and the mother of a United States district court judge, who had discovered the bodies upon returning home from work.

In the weeks and months prior to that day, the judge had been featured fairly prominently in the headlines on a semi-regular basis. She was presiding over a controversial trademark infringement case involving a white supremacist organization. The judge had received a number of death threats in connection with the litigation, and the leader of the organization had been jailed for attempting to hire a hit-man to “take out” the judge.

There were other reasons to take threats from this group seriously. In July 1999, one of its members – after the leader was denied a law license by the Illinois Bar Committee for lacking the requisite moral character and fitness – went on a three-day shooting spree ranging from the northern Chicago suburbs to Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood to downstate Illinois and Indiana, killing two people and wounding nine. An adherent of “Racial Holy War” doctrine, the shooter specifically targeted Jews, African Americans, and Asians. On the Fourth of July, while fleeing police in southern Illinois, the shooter took his own life.

So it was not a great leap for people in the neighborhood to assume that crazed bigots were on the attack, murderous neo-Nazis.

The killer hadn’t left many clues behind in the judge’s house – there were reports of a cigarette butt that might yield DNA evidence, but not much else to go on.

Within a few days, signs began to appear in windows and on porches and gates and lamp-posts on the blocks surrounding the judge’s house. In red block type, all capitals, on white poster board, the signs vowed that we, the people of the neighborhood, would stand up and stand firm and stand together against hatred and bigotry. Solidarity, respect, tolerance, and love would prevail.

About two weeks later, a van was stopped by police in a Milwaukee suburb, for a simple traffic violation. After pulling over, the driver drew a gun and shot himself, fatally. A note was found in the van, describing and confessing to the murders of the judge’s husband and mother and explaining his motives for the crime.

It turned out that the killer was a litigant in an entirely different case on the judge’s docket. He had filed a suit for medical malpractice against his doctor, who, the killer claimed, had botched cancer surgery on the killer’s face, leaving it permanently disfigured. The judge had dismissed the case.

So it wasn’t the neo-Nazis after all. Just another disgruntled customer.

I know people were relieved when the mystery was resolved. I know I was. But I had a feeling then, and I do now, that people weren’t quite satisfied. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say they weren’t quite reassured or soothed. The feeling of uneasiness didn’t go away.

The man who turned out to be the killer was, it came to light, pretty much what most of us would call a crazy person. Paranoid. Full of incomprehensible theories and notions that didn’t connect up. Used language that didn’t quite parse. He had no discernible political ideology or philosophical system. Other than, “I was screwed over. The people who screwed me over deserve to die.”

Over time, it appeared that his credo had gotten shortened and simplified, so that it went, “People deserve to die.”

Somehow, I think, for many people, it would have been easier to accept the crime if it had been motivated by something … anything. Something evil, yet logical. Something with internal consistency. As Walter Sobchak said, “I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” Nazis seem easier for the mind to grasp than Nihilists, because at least Nazis stand for something. Something terrible, but something.

Within a month or two, the signs – the solidarity, tolerance, and love signs – began to come down. I still spot one occasionally.

Maybe some people are just very slow to change their décor. Maybe they just think the sentiment on the sign remains applicable; after all, hate groups still abound. Or maybe they realize that the sentiment goes beyond the easily categorized and classified, goes beyond the “organized” racist cults of the world, and also applies to the “merely” crazy, the free-form nuts, the people who have adopted the very American belief that people who screw them over deserve to die – and maybe people in general do, too – and that they are entitled to carry out the execution.

Like this:

Stronger Than Dirt Pete Moss is one of the many aliases used by a Tom Long of Chicago, Illinois (not to be confused with other Tom Longs of Chicago or elsewhere). Tom was active in xerox zine culture from the late ’80s through the early ’00s under the Colicky Baby Records and Tapes imprint, and several examples of Tom’s mail art periodicals are filed deeply and safely away at the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department in Iowa City and the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York City. Every so often he posts things at http://colicky.blogspot.com.

You’re right about how people prefer to see horrific events in their historical/ideological framework (I know I do!), but there is research (I’ve been linking to it all week) that indicates environment can play a role in how the unhinged act out. It’s not that, say, toxic talk causes violence, it’s that it can provide direction for how violence unfolds. Nothing is automatic and the connections aren’t clean. I have no idea if any of this applies to Loughner but it’s a fair topic of conversation.

Jimmy G. and Derek,
For me, last weekend’s shooting stands out because it was an attempted assassination of a politician who had specifically been targeted with toxic/violent rhetoric (not to mention her opponent’s violence-oriented campaign themes and images). None of us can get inside Loughner’s head, but I think the non-ideological/non-conspiratorial question is: Does a climate of violent rhetoric make it more or less likely that a disturbed individual will act out?
Check out this article on the concept of stochastic terrorism.

I have been following the discussion as well as Derek and Tom’s posts, and updates since they’ve appeared. From my reading, the psychiatrists are also somewhat divided regarding what triggers this type of behavior. Schwartz, for example, contends that environment plays a role. Torrey, also a psychiatrist, states that the accused is a textbook psychotic. I have to ask: doesn’t this environment/mental illness dichotomy hark back to the age-old nature or nurture argument?

I think it might.

Personally, I am not so convinced that Loughner is a psychotic. According to some branches of psychoanalysis, a true psychotic lacks the linguistic coherence necessary to elaborate historical trajectories, which are common in ideological thinking. His posturing, however, does appear to share some of these characteristics. Nonetheless, I am inclined to consider him a pathological narcissist, who can create elaborate historical models —albeit crackpot or Polpot ones—.

I am borrowing much of this thinking from Slajov Zizek, an accomplished social critic and author of numerous books, who takes a psychoanalytical approach to popular film as well as crimes against humanity. He concludes that the problem is rooted in how the subject sees him or herself. The ideological version of the pathological narcissist will see himself as the tool of History, what Zizek calls the Big Other. However, this Big Other bears the same structure as the Mother figure in the Hitchcock thriller Psycho, the ever present (transvested) voice of the protagonist Norman that tells him to carry out the Other’s will. As a result, Zizek’s contention is that trigger is the perverse nature of (this individual’s) nurture. Let’s keep in mind that Charles Manson’s plan was designed to create a Historical event, Helter Skelter, the great race war. It was Historical; it was somewhat ideological, but he came up with the idea by listening to the Beatles’ White Album.

So, what I am suggesting, for me anyway, might even be scarier than the idea that the environment is the trigger. We can attempt to control the environment. However, it this is accurate, then the predictors are largely invisible.

If I turn around the question it will better illustrate the point I am trying to make. If the political rhetoric is uncivil, disrespectful and violent (and it is), we will see these events more often? However, what is evident is that some can hear the violent rhetoric as impassioned discourse and leave it at that because they don’t suffer from the delusion of having to respond to a larger Other.

Maybe this is why Loughner was photographed with that horrendous smirk on his face in his mug shot. To me, it suggests that he did it because he enjoyed it, he finally pleased his Big Other.

Although I didn’t recall the name, I did remember the rampage and its connection to Matt Hale. My university has a Thursday-evening political discussion program, which has run for around 20 years, and one coordinator accidentally invited Hale to participate. When she found out who he was, she rescinded the invitation, which caused a minor court battle. He was a nasty SOB.

There are some connections between Smith and Loughner. If you compare the document you linked from the Albion Monitor and the weekend’s NYT article on Loughner, you will see that violence, domination, and control of women is a key factor in both of the (perverse) killers. For me, this central hatred and resentment of women in positions of power is hallmark of the perverse mindset.

Although I don’t recall any reference to racism in the NYT article, I wouldn’t be surprised to find it in a psychiatric profile of Loughner. In psychoanalytical terms, racism is the assumption that an Other is receiving the benefits to which the perverse subject sees himself as entitled to. The crucial difference between the misogynist and the racist is that there is a displacement of the primary object. In the former, women are not playing their role as the Great Givers and Providers (for men’s needs). In the latter, the society is not playing its role as the Great Giver and Providers (for one group’s needs).